2024 NLL Player Rankings: The All-Around Edition
After the first several weeks of the 2023-24 National Lacrosse League season are complete, The Lax Mag will publish a weekly NLL Player Ranking, examining the league’s Top 30 players from Week 1 right up until the end of the regular season.
TLM’s Top 30 NLL Player Rankings have nothing to do with reputations, career resumes, success in past seasons, whether we know a player personally, recognizing deserving players who’ve previously been passed over, player popularity, the size of their social media following, whether you slide into their DMs, or who others around the league tell us should get hype.
Our rankings, which only take into consideration a player’s performance for the current regular season, will be calculated using both our star-rating system after each game, but also a player’s season-long statistical position (based on per-game average, not full-season totals) across the league. Only players who have played two-thirds of their team’s games will qualify.
Click here for an even more in-depth description of our scoring system.
Connor Fields, Rochester Knighthawks (Photo: Micheline Veluvolu)
This week, two new names that have been bouncing around the 30-40 mark for most of the season have finally cracked The Lax Mag’s weekly Top 30. But, before we reveal those players, let’s examine exactly the type of player these two tremendous talents are.
While one has a T (for Transition) next to their name and the other a D (for Defenseman), they both play a somewhat similar all-around style. Basically, the do anything asked of them at either end of the floor, and do it well enough that their coaches continually trust them to keep doing it. Trust, there’s many players in the league that know as soon as they cross centre, whichever way they’re going - outside of an emergency situation - they better be headed back to the bench.
Steve Toll, first-ever NLL Transition Player of the Year (2007)
We’ve discussed to death the confusing and inconsistent classification of today’s transition player. Case in point, our two new Top 30 players are so similar in so many ways, yet apparently play two completely different positions. No other sport would do that (why complicate things any further?), but apparently it makes sense in our box lacrosse bubble.
Anyways, in most cases over the years, the league’s Transition Player of the Year is often referred to as “complete”, “versatile” or “all-around”.
all-around [ awl-uh-round ]
adjective
1. able to do many things; versatile:
an all-around player.
2. broadly applicable; not specialized:
an all-around education.
In order to determine who some of this year’s top all-around players are, we wanted to know who did the most both offensively and defensively, and beyond that, the most at the highest level.
Statistics that have been mentioned when TPOTYs are announced annually often include goals, assists, loose balls, caused turnovers, and even blocks in more recent years. Face-offs get brought up too, but apply to well under 50% of TPOTY finalists and winners, so we’ll ignore that figure to keep things cleaner in our calculations.
Thought: A Geoff Snider Award presented to the season’s top face-off taker? You like? Coincidently, the long-ago retired Snider was a threat on either side of the floor for his entire career, but also didn’t make many friends throughout the league, so was sadly never voted the NLL’s top transition player. Facts.
Geoff Snider, 2008 NLL All-Star Game MVP
We’ve pulled the Top 100 players in each of the following statistical categories: goals per game, assists per game, loose balls per game, caused turnovers per game and blocks per game. For the same reason our Player Rankings use per-game stats (due to the inconsistency in equal GPs for teams throughout a season), we’re going the same route here.
Out of the nearing 400 players that have played this year, how many of them appeared in the Top 100 from all five statistical per-game categories?
Only one.
How many came up in four of those five lists?
Just four.
A total of 56 players popped up in three of those per-game Top 100s, which included a lot of defensive players with good to great LB, CTO and BLK averages, and also forwards who had strong Gs & As, but also higher than average (for forwards) LB totals too.
So, who is that one multifaceted on-floor freak that appeared in all five Top 100 per-game counts?
The Buffalo Bandits’ do-it-all devil, Ian MacKay.
Ian MacKay, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Michael Hetzel)
MacKay had a bit of a breakout season when it came to being an all-around player last year. In 2023, Buffalo’s offense was severely banged up, so MacKay stepped up and produced up front. This year, it was the Bandits’ own end that was understaffed, so MacKay has spent more time filling in the gaps there. With Max Adler out and before recently signing Connor Farrell, it was MacKay the team turned to for a face-off fill-in.
The very few four that appeared on four of those statistical lists?
Well, two more Bandits in forward Dhane Smith (G, A, LB, CT) and true-transition player Nick Weiss (A, LB, CT, BLK), plus Saskatchewan Rush defenseman Mike Messenger (G, LB, CT, BLK) and Jake Boudreau (A, LB, CT, BLK).
It’s MacKay (#29) and Messenger (#30) that landed in our Top 30 this week, with Smith sitting within our Top 10 since Week 9 (Boudreau made the 30 earlier this year too). See the rest of this week’s updated Top 30 below.
NLL Top 30: Week 17
TW. (LW) Player, Team (Position)
1. (1) Connor Fields, Rochester (F)
2. (3) Josh Byrne, Buffalo (F)
3. (4) Jeff Teat, New York (F)
4. (2) Nick Rose, Toronto (G)
5. (5) Dhane Smith, Buffalo (F)
6. (6) Wes Berg, San Diego (F)
7. (7) Ryan Smith, Rochester (F)
8. (9) Austin Staats, San Diego (F)
9. (8) Jesse King, Calgary (F)
10. (14) Mitch Jones, Philadelphia (F)
11. (11) Callum Crawford, Panther City (F)
12. (12) Alex Simmons, Albany (F)
13. (10) Mitch de Snoo, Toronto (D)
14. (13) Will Malcom, Panther City (F)
15. (16) Jake Withers, Halifax (D)
16. (17) Clarke Petterson, Halifax (F)
17. (19) Doug Jamieson, Albany (G)
18. (20) Christian Del Bianco, Calgary (G)
19. (18) Chris Origlieri, San Diego (G)
20. (21) Matt Gilray, Rochester (T)
21. (15) Lyle Thompson, Georgia (F)
22. (23) Zach Higgins, Philadelphia (G)
23. (24) Robert Church, Saskatchewan (F)
24. (22) Brad Kri, Toronto (D)
25. (25) Mark Matthews, Toronto (F)
26. (26) Graeme Hossack, Halifax (D)
27. (30) Joe Resetarits, Philadelphia (F)
28. (27) Zach Manns, Saskatchewan (F)
29. (NR) Ian MacKay, Buffalo (T)
30. (NR) Mike Messenger, Saskatchewan (T)